#why dont i draw more quarks???? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

helisol · 3 years

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answering the people’s prayers

quark is my poor little meow meow and here is why

me and a friend of mine came to the conclusion that the writers of ds9 accidentally put a seven seasons long tragic character arc into their show without realising and I need to share our findings with you.

*full disclosure the writers for sure didn’t know what they were making but the result is still the same. tragedy.

now you may ask, is calling quark a tragic figure of epic proportions hyperbole? maybe! but also it really isn’t for two reasons:

first is that quark can’t win. throughout the entirety of ds9 he’s in a situation where he just constantly draws the short straw and loses things (and people) and he can’t make it better. those moments in the show probably don’t make the average viewer sad, like in a tragedy, but I’m hoping to unlock some elusive shrimp-color emotions in you with this rant.

anyway second there’s the fact that quark is,,, alone. not in the physical sense. mans literally runs a bar and has tons of friends Co-Inhabitants Of Deep Space Nine I mean nobody understands who and what he is with one notable exception and he can’t tell anyone either because that would defeat the purpose. what purpose is that? well it's complicated but let’s start with that.

in my quodo rant- which you dont have to read but like it might give you more insight on my personal brand of brainrot- I made the same observation that most people make when they look at quark which is “there’s something wrong with this rat bastard”

now many people say that and they mean “this small orange man is a douche and I don’t like him” and like okay you’re not looking at the big picture though

when I say “there’s something wrong with him” I mean this dude is literally repressing his personality and nature so hard that he’s turned it into a performance. into some weird art form. masking so much he made it impossible for anyone to really know his true self. he’s trying to be an ideal version of himself that does not and can not exist.

to quote myself- his own wiki page literally calls him “a compassionate and generous man by ferengi standards” which pretty much translates to “not really a good ferengi” quark is that, a people-person and he loves his friends but he pretends that he is Not any of those things because it's not what a ferengi should be.

and think about it. who needs to conform but the people who are not the thing they’re trying to conform to? who has to try really hard to be something except for people who are not that thing? quark is not a good ferengi but he feels the need to try so very hard to be one.

he tries to conform to every little ideal and rule of acquisition that he grew up with even though 9 out of 10 times he fails. and still he tries to be the ferengi he is not. for what?

it’s a piss poor attempt of trying to hide who he is. he’s a ferengi who doesn’t know how-to-ferengi, but unlike the rest of his family, he hates that about himself.

his mother, brother and nephew all take a certain kind of pride in being #NotLikeOtherFerengi because they’ve found acceptance and love and support. ever notice how quark has pretty much none of those things?

rom has his engineering, a brilliant son, his mother’s love and a wife who adores him- and he ends up becoming the grand fuckin nagus!

what does quark have? well he doesn’t get his mother’s full support, his brother and the general public regard him as a ’loveable asshole’ at best, and even his actual friends don’t really think twice when talking shit about him.

quark, fundamentally, is the same as his family. he does not and can not be a good ferengi because it’s not in his nature. they’re simply built different. but unlike his family he wasn’t born with the understanding that that’s okay.

he doesn’t think it’s okay to be different because when deviancy comes to light bad things happen to him. it started from when he got made fun of because of his mothers liberal attitude and it continued when rom got ripped off in the marriage contract situation because he fell in love (which Normal Ferengi don’t do) and brought further ridicule over their family.

even though it’s not necessarily true as demonstrated by his family’s success story quark believes that deviancy gets punished, not rewarded.

that’s the first tragic thing- he IS a deviant. he DOES care about his family and his friends and he wants to be loved and to have something to be proud of. profit is secondary to him. he just can’t admit it, ever.

it’s not that hard to piece together that quark genuinely doesn’t like himself. Ferengi Love Songs really highlights that with him becoming depressed after a big part of what helped him keep up appearances as ‘a good ferengi’, his commerce license, is taken away from him.

everything he does in that episode is in service of a) getting that commerce license back and more importantly b) BEING COMFORTED. his life sucks at the moment! he would really like some support!

he wants someone to hold his face and say “you know, it’s okay that your license is gone. you don’t need it.” because maybe if someone did that he could drop the act and stop trying so hard to be a good ferengi.

but what does he get? what does he have at the end of the episode? a minor conflict with his mother was resolved, but he has to keep up his performance. the charade never ends for him!

he can’t admit to anyone that he’s aware he’s different. he’s waiting for them to figure him out. and nobody ever does. because nobody cares for quark enough to really see him and go “I know what you’re doing, you can stop now”

...

except! for! odo!

this is not quodo rant 2.0 so I’m gonna keep this brief but odo does understand him. the problem is just that odo ALSO can’t admit that he’s not what he makes himself out to be.

he sees what quark is doing but instead of saying “you can stop pretending now. we can both stop.” he uses quark as a way to keep up his own act.

in my mind there’s no talking about Quark without Odo since they’re both doing this performance of ideal selves together, but I’ll get back to that later.

so we can all agree that quark is in a very bad situation when it comes to how he feels about himself and the world around him. my friend described it as a reverse-corruption arc (or a straight up corruption arc from the ferengi perspective) in which quark, over the years, becomes more and more influenced by the hoo-mans.

in and of itself this is a great arc, since he’s turning into a more moral person and it makes him an interesting character but what people may not consider is that it is AGONISING TO HIM.

he HATES his own character arc and he is being dragged through it kicking and screaming internally. quark literally says so in Ferengi Love Songs. I hear his delivery of “I’ve fought against it, I really have.” and I go ape shitt because that’s really just it huh. quark is fighting every step of the way to not show his real natural self to the world out of fear of getting hurt.

and the real tragedy is that nobody on the station notices or understands why he’s struggling so hard. except for one guy who is also his fucked up ‘partner in the struggle to hide ourselves’ and who he can’t talk to about his feelings because if he did it would be admitting that they’re friends and not just a cop and a criminal.

his family just says “well, why are you struggling, we’re also not good ferengi and we’re Fine” and his friends say “well, it would be good, actually, if you stopped acting like a ferengi”

and he is all. alone. with this struggle.

that’s tragedy baby.

but what is also tragedy is how this plays out in the actual show.

most of what I’ve said is like. subtext mixed with some visions I got from an angry god. but let’s discuss the fact that if you accept quark’s internal struggle as tragic his whole story becomes a tragedy.

I mentioned at the start that ‘Quark can’t win’- what that means is just that, like in any good tragedy, no matter what actions quark takes he ends up having to deal with negative consequences.

Jadzia, the only person who openly declared herself as his friend ignoring the weird romantic shit because fuck that and Odo who I WILL straight up call his love interest because we all hate rick berman here both just leave in some abstract sense.

jadzia ‘coming back’ as ezri means she’s not entirely dead, but she isn’t really as interested in him now. that hurts. their whole relationship is different and he couldn’t prevent it.

and with odo he did try to prevent it, I think. see my quodo rant where I go on about this in more detail but in the ds9 finale quark essentially goes “if you’re going to leave me, you better give me a real goodbye” in the hopes that maybe odo would either give him closure or just not go. but he does. he loses odo as well.

quark, the guy who said "I've made a career out of knowing when to leave" in the FIRST EPISODE watches as the most important people in his life just go away.

he’s been on ds9 for well over 20 years and he will stay for forever while everyone around him leaves.

am I the only one who thinks about this and just wants to punch a hole in the wall to feel manly again? like HELLO???

and this isn’t even mentioning all the shit he has to cope with in terms of material loss. you may think that losing people would be more important but remember this man has a masters degree in Pretending To Be A Ferengi because it's the only thing that he can hide behind.

quark spent his whole life acting like the perfect ferengi to fit into a society that would reject his true nature.

the fact that he has to try so hard still makes the society reject and punish him and it makes him miserable.

and if that wasn’t enough. when all the wars and all the great losses are over. the society starts to change because it’s now run by his brother.

everything quark used to define himself and tried to be a part of just starts to vanish in front of his eyes and he has to realise that, in the end, he denied himself all these years for NO REASON.

in the future, nobody will care if he fits the old ferengi ideals. in the future, the perfect ferengi is going to be the opposite of what quark pretended to be all this time.

he can’t fucking win. no matter what he does fate or the universe or the wormhole aliens or his own mother will change the status quo to make quark unable to fit in.

do you see? do you see why he’s my poor little meow meow? it’s because this is a sad little man and whenever he tries to do what he thinks is right the world says ‘no actually we’ll be taking something you use to comfort yourself with you sad little man’

and the worst offender. I swear I’m not gonna talk about quodo for too long. is what the writers did with odo and him.

the writers probably did not think of quark as a tragic figure the way I do. how do I know?

if the writers were aware that they were creating a tragic figure with an amazingly rich character arc and an insanely complex internal struggle… they would not have made it Quark. they would have used a generically hot alien. because honestly people who don’t have brainworm are not gonna appreciate this shit if the character they’re looking at is an orange capitalist gremlin with giant ears. I don’t blame them. but it is what it is.

so the writers wrote this incredibly cool thing on accident and also stuck the landing.

because odo leaving… fucking hurts.

even if you don’t view them as romantic which is fair you Have to see that quark and odos relationship is special. they’ve been doing this dance for decades at this point, and at the very end odo turns away from quark without a word.

in the moment where quark opens himself up just enough to allow odo to do the same he goes “welp, I’ll be on the runabout, see you never again” and like Yeah obviously it's because odo is still a repressed nerd who can't talk about his feelings but that doesn’t change the fact that this is perhaps the worst thing that could happen to quark.

like, it’s the first and only and last time he does it. even in The Ascent they don’t actually verbally confront the fact that their relationship is far more friendship-like than it is antagonistic. and in the finale there’s this opportunity where he takes action and goes after odo his best friend his enemy because he wants to have something before he too goes away forever-

and the writers said “but it doesn’t happen. he doesn’t get to have it.”

in summary I am rattling the bars of my cage. quark is so hot.

#Did you ever hear the tragedy of Quark? well now you have #ds9 #deep space nine #quark #odo #and yknow its also quodo #my writing

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im-basically-logan · 6 years

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Happy Density Day!

haha get it cuz the formula for density looks like a heart. I still dont know how to title things. Analogical V-Day fic anybody? (quick note- sorry if the pacing is sorta weird??? idk how story writing works. personally my favorite part is the last few paragraphs lmao)

Summary: Logan wants to give Virgil a poem for Valentine’s Day, but wants to make it as perfect as possible. Either way, Virgil loves it. Words: 2,796 Ship: Analogical, Royality (tho, it’s only briefly mentioned and analogical is the focus) TW: Kissing, sleeping at bad hours, uh... Patton tackles Roman playfully at one point Please send me an ask/message if I need to add a trigger. Genre: Fluff!!

@riverbendover @nokatai-realm @crowsketches @living-on-the-virge

It was about 3 days before Valentine’s Day and as much as Logan would usually show nonchalance or distaste towards the holiday, he’s been Virgil’s boyfriend for 8 months now. He wasn’t going to brush off their first Valentine’s Day. He was going to make the perfect card for his Virgil even if it meant he didn’t get any sleep that week. Well, that was an exaggeration and Virgil would probably ask as to why Logan’s sleep schedule had suddenly done a 180. But nonetheless, Logan was going to make a nice little card.

Logan started out with printer paper as a planning stage, wondering what to actually put in the card. He went through scribbled out drawings, minimalistic pictures, telling Virgil how beautiful he was, and finally settled on writing a poem. He was good at those. Usually.

His trash can in his room began filling with balled up clumps of paper which were drafts that he deemed not good enough.

“Clothes are dark as space, but eyes as bright as the stars. I hope-- No.” Logan mumbled the poem out loud to himself, then crumpled up the paper, threw it to the side, and started anew. The side of his hand was turning gray from being left-handed and the graphite of the pencil he was using. “I cannot describe to you how much I love you. It was a revelation when I had discovered my feelings for you. Like when Newton discovered gravity. It was fundamental to understanding life as you are fundamental to me understanding emotions…” He tapped the pencil against his head quickly, trying to think. It sounded… Like something. It wasn’t too bad, but he decided to trash and rewrite it again. It was probably just fine, but Logan was a perfectionist.

He began writing a bit more before deciding to create the decorations on the light purple construction paper he found for the actual card. He had the equation 128√e980 written along over the spine while the card was flattened. The equation was supposed to be read while the card was closed and turned a certain way, and it would read “I love you” from being folded in half. He found the little trick while looking up ways to say I love you to a partner. In pen he neatly wrote inside the cover of the card the beginning to his poem to Virgil. The beginning was the only thing he was happy with at the moment, but he would add more later. He checked his watch and read 11:30 pm. He sighed, put his materials away and went to bed. Although made sure to put the card neatly into the drawer of his desk. It was only 2 days before Valentine’s Day and he barely had anything! He wanted to keep working on it, but also sleeping was important and he and the others were working on getting a full night’s rest. Besides, Virgil would badger him in the morning about it and he couldn’t have his boyfriend find his surprise.

Logan went through the next day rather smoothly: Nice comebacks to Roman, reminding Thomas of important events, and of course a few nice kisses with Virgil in the middle of it all. Patton always grinned if he caught them and Roman always teased them until Logan mentioned it was almost Valentine’s Day.

“We are allowed to have physical affection, especially around this time of year, correct?” Logan asked Roman, raising a brow with a pouting expression.

“Well I suppose so, but… You two are such nerds!” Roman responded weakly, unable to come up with a witty reply. Patton butted in, putting his arm around Roman’s shoulders.

“Now, don’t be mean, Roman. It’s your time of the year, isn’t it? Valentine’s Day! A day of Roman-ce.” Patton laughed and Virgil, who was leaning slightly against Logan, snickered. Logan sighed with a very small hint of a smile while Roman rolled his eyes with a laugh. He exited with Patton, most likely about to go on an adventure or brainstorm. Logan, although, had a pit in his stomach as he was constantly reminded Valentine’s Day was just around the corner.

Such terrible planning on my end… He thought, biting the inside of his mouth before kissing Virgil on the head as they went to do their own separate things for now. He sank out and went to his room, relieved to find it just as it was when he left it. He hadn’t taken out his trash yet, but he assumed Virgil wouldn’t go digging through it at least and see the drafts. Checking his watch, which read 8:30 pm, Logan pulled out the drawer and took out the card. He drew a little density equation on the back, coloring in the little heart that the symbols for mass over volume created. He then opened the card back up, rereading the beginning of the poem he kept from a draft.

“I don’t believe I’ll be able to explain my love towards you. Like how it is a mystery as to the true way the universe was created despite the many theories. How the chances of us existing together may have been smaller than a quark, But we managed to exist and come together.” Logan sat down at his desk and began writing a bit more, once again mumbling the words to himself as he wrote. “Your mind can be as far away as a galaxy,

but I’d travel the light years.

You’re a fundamental element in my life, Like gravity to planets and stars.” He bit the bottom of his lip, unable to think of anything else to add. “I can’t even write a simple poem…” He murmured to himself, dropping his pencil. He kept his head up with his left hand, trying to think. There wasn’t any specific pattern or rhyme to the poem. It was purely just him rambling about how great Virgil is in metaphors about space and science. Would Virgil even enjoy that? He created a small, curvy border with a blue pen on the inside of the card, but cringed as he looked back to the unfinished poem. Then he put another line. “I am and always will be unable to express how much I care for you.” It was true, but the poem felt too short and he barely had an idea on how to end it. He wrote on the other half of the inside of the card “Happy Valentine’s Day, Virgil. Love, Logan”, drew a simplistic galaxy on the front, and went back to his previous position of laying his head atop his hand. Instead of coming up with any ideas, Logan somehow fell asleep on his hand. He took his nap for about 4 hours, waking up at the superb hour of around 1 am and his head ended up on the desk with his hand still upright. Great. Only 1 day until Valentine’s Day and he was barely done with his card. He dug his hands into his hair in frustration. It should have been easy to write a poem. But no it was going to be difficult and now he was tired as hell. He decided to create the blue borders on the outside of the card while waiting for the others to get up. After finishing the border, which did look rather nice, he put it back in the desk drawer and went to sleep in his bed this time. Although he didn’t fall asleep immediately. Of course not. He was thinking about what Virgil would think if he barely had anything to give. The poem was pretty choppy… he should rewrite it again. What if Virgil didn’t even want a card? Would chocolates have been better?

Luckily, Logan didn’t stay up late enough to question anymore as he crashed into sleep while thinking about Virgil. Said side must have felt Logan still being awake because he made his way into Logan’s room having woke up early himself. It was dark so he couldn’t see the trash can of the Valentine’s drafts but he could feel his way over to Logan’s bed and curled into his chest almost like a human-sized cat. Before going back to sleep, he kissed Logan’s cheek and put his head half on some pillow and half on the mattress with his head lying against the top of Logan’s chest. He didn’t mind sleeping like this, in fact if he was resting next to Logan on just a mattress he’d be content like that as well.

In the morning, the actual morning of about 7:45 am, Logan found a Virgil sleeping next to him. He sighed dreamily, then remembered that he still hadn’t thrown out his god damn drafts yet. Logan tried to move as subtly and quietly as possible to not wake Virgil. He eventually got out of bed and moved the plastic bin under his desk quickly as he heard Virgil shuffling on the bed. Then he went back over his bed, kissing Virgil’s forehead.

“Virge? C’mon, it’s almost 8 o’ clock,” Logan said, looking at his watch. Virgil was awake, but he kept his eyes closed as he replied,”I don’t wanna.”

“Patton’s making french toast.” “5 more minutes.”

“We both know that means 5 more hours, metaphorically and even literally at times.”

“Shush, nerd.” Virgil eventually opened his eyes and got up, his hair messy and partially standing. Logan smirked at the other’s appearance, holding out his hand for Virgil to take. So Virgil takes it gladly and they move on with the rest of their day.

Logan had barely any opportunities to work on his card but while there was a short lull he managed to write a few more lines. “You’re nothing short of breath taking. A star should be named after you. No, a galaxy.”

He stopped as he felt a presence in his room. It was Patton. Oh thank god. They both headed off to the commons to discuss with the other two about the big day tomorrow.

“What are you two doing?” Roman asked Virgil and Logan. They both shrugged, but Logan of course, had a small gift to finish.

“Why are you asking?” Virgil replied. “What are you doing, Princey?” Roman was about to respond when he was suddenly tackled by Patton on the couch, letting out a boisterous laugh.

“Well of course, romantic things! Anyways, I thought you’d both at least say something like spending time with each other.” He continued as Patton got off and sat next to him, a wide grin on his face.

“Well that’s a given, isn’t it?” That was Logan, who quirked a brow.

Virgil shrugged. “Sure. We can just chill out here since Romano and Patton are probably going to the fantasy realm or whatever.”

Logan nodded as Roman scoffed at the seemingly mundane idea. He said it was such a boring thing to do on Valentine’s Day, but Virgil didn’t mind.

They all went off to do their jobs and then night time came around again.

Logan was rushing through his notes after playing a game of 52 pickup with his slang vocab cards which he foolishly dropped while hurrying back to his room. He closed his binder with satisfaction after looking at the schedule, putting it away in a separate drawer from the card, which he took back out of its hiding place. He was clueless as to what to add. It had barely any stanzas. Logan tapped his pencil against the table, making a fast paced clicking noise.

“Ughhh!” The logical facet sighed, his mind totally blank. “I should have gotten more hours of sleep.” He looked at his watch: 10:40 pm. He could still finish it by tomorrow. Logan, although, was holding his head up with his forearms, consciousness blinking on and off. He decided, if anything, to add just one more line he could think of. Everything else was decorated and he could finish it after taking a quick nap. He wrote it down slowly due to fatigue, but still tried his best to make it look neat.

“I love--”

Then somehow passed out while writing with a pen. Though, Thomas used to do that at times so was it really that surprising? He was out cold for a while and even slept past 8 am.

“Logan?” Virgil called, noticing Logan’s absence in the morning from the commons. Then Virgil finally found his boyfriend’s head resting on his desk with a nicely decorated card next to his right arm. He noticed the still full trash can of paper and then picked up the card. He didn’t read the inside yet, wanting to see the other things first. He noticed the equation “I love you” message first and chuckled at such a nerdy detail. Then he found the density formula on the back and smirked. How had he been so blessed as to have had such a caring nerd in his life?

Virgil finally opened the card to see the partially unfinished poem on the left flap and a nicely written closing on the right. He saw his name, so this must’ve been for him.

“I guess he didn’t finish…” Virgil concluded out loud to himself, but he really wanted to read the poem. Logan had written him previous poems and he absolutely loved them. So he read it aloud, mumbling the words under his breath.

but I’d travel the light years. You’re a fundamental element in my life, Like gravity to planets and stars. I am and always will be unable to express how much I care for you. You’re nothing short of breathtaking. A star should be named after you. No a nebula. I love…”

Logan had woken up as Virgil was reading the second to last stanza, although wasn’t completely aware of his surroundings yet.

“Morning, dear,” Logan greeted with a yawn, adjusting his glasses and hair as much as he could. He was calm and tired until he saw what Virgil had in his hand and then he was fully awake in an instant.

“I… did you read that?” Virgil nodded slowly, hoping the logical facet wasn’t upset. They sat in silence for a few moments before Virgil, surprisingly, broke the silence.

“Um… I really liked it, actually. Really.” He gave a genuine smile, moving to plant a kiss on Logan’s messy hair.

“Really?” “Yes, I did.” “It’s not even finished or--” Logan almost tripped over his own feet trying to sit up from the chair. It was way too early for this. (It was almost 1 pm).

Virgil laughed as Logan struggled to stand up and move, eventually falling onto his bed face first before slowly turning himself around and sitting up. Virgil made his way over to the bed too with much less stumbling, sitting down next to Logan.

“I assume this-” Virgil pointed at the word “love” at the end of the poem. “-is supposed to say ‘I love you’, right?”

Logan looked at Virgil deliriously for a few seconds before practically diving forward and kissing him. Virgil almost let go of the card, but held on and melted into the kiss, smiling as he did so. Then they both fell backwards onto the bed in suppressed giggles.

“I’ve never seen you this giddy,” Virgil commented teasingly.

Logan pointed an index finger straight up as in an objection. “In my defense, I’m very tired.” They both broke into laughter again. After a few minutes of Logan waking up, he had Virgil give him the card to finish writing out “you” and then gave it back.

“I love it, Logan.” He looked at the now fully visible trash can of drafts. “Man… I wish I made something.”

“It’s okay Virgil, you yourself are enough,” Logan replied, pecking Virgil on the forehead who look assured enough for now.

They eventually made their way downstairs, Virgil still latching onto the card, and had their first Valentine’s Day. It consisted of Virgil constantly complimenting Logan’s card and poem, making him blush, and Logan constantly saying how amazing Virgil is, making him blush as well. They cuddled on the couch and watched a few documentaries about space and other oddities.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, dear.” Logan presses a kiss to Virgil’s lips for the millionth time today.

Virgil smiles into it and responds,”Happy Valentine’s Day, nerd.”

#sander sides #analogical #logan sanders #virgil sanders #royality but not rlly #patton sanders #roman sanders #sander sides fic #valentines day #kissing #analogical fluff #my fic #lo rambles

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